I love writing. I revere the use of language as an instrument for seeking the truth about life. My books are downloadable and the paperback editions will be appearing soon. Click on the links at the right side of this page. Peruse this blog, it's loaded with music, photography and writing. Hey, sign up for my email list!

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Your Content Will Resume In 30 Seconds....

Sept 29, 2012

"Your content will resume in 30 seconds....".

Over on the sidebar of my G-mail, there's a squib for an internet video. It's called "Chef Says He Marinated Wife's Body Slowly". Before I can watch this delightful cooking tutorial, I get this pre-video advertisement. This is a new feature in our lives, this pre-content advertisement. Everything I want to see or hear on YouTube, Vimeo, etc, comes spring-loaded with a product placement. Frequently there is the courtesy of an opt-out click: I can skip it and go right to the video. Nowadays, however, the "skip this ad" box is increasingly missing, and there's no choice but to wait through thirty seconds of being treated like an infant as the commercial for (chose at least one)Food, Cars, Vodka or Phones, throws its hook into the waters of your psyche.I want to see how ubiquitous this practice has become. I continue waiting for the cannibal chef video.

"Your content will resume in 30 seconds."First I have to watch a commercial from a
product called Nautica, and I'm not quite sure what it is: A TV show, a body
spray for men or a pitch for ocean resorts. After thirty seconds of slick pitch I still don't know what the products is and I'm content NOT to know. THEN I get the details of the chef/murderer/cannibal. I close the page after about eight seconds.

There are commercials at gas pumps and commercials on
screens at urinals in public buildings.Some day I'll buy a pair of pants and when I put my hands in their
pockets a little hologram will appear at chest height saying, "The
contents of your pockets will be available in thirty seconds."

Monetizing.I can
monetize my web sites, have little ads

in the margins and get
paid for every hit on my site.Make
some serious coin, oh yeah.

I don't even know if this is a problem.I've been watching commercials since I was a
kid.Our entertainment is funded this
way.It becomes a problem when our
INFORMATION becomes funded this way because the funders get to decide what
information we can access.

There was a broadcast yesterday on Fox News, live, of a man
blowing his brains out after a car chase."Get it off!Get it
off!," the shocked announcer barked, a second after the running man had
pointed the pistol at his head and produced a vapor of blood and brain as he
died in front of the cameras.Any
fool watching the live action could see what was about to happen.The guy pulled a gun from his clothing.He was in a desperate condition.

Your content will resume in 30 seconds.Deodorant soap, aaaaah!Cut to car chase, suicide, or cannibal chef
who has re-visioned the term "eating out", or....any goddam grotesque
thing in the world.30 seconds.Buy this new cell phone.It replaces the one you bought last week
that is now hopelessly out of date.Siamese twins challenge courts for right to marry one another.

This is our world.

You want it? A fixer-upper, slightly used.

Your content will resume in 30 seconds.....but first the
commercial: Planet Earth, a paradise in the Milky Way, comfortably nestled in
the suburbs, not a black hole in the neighborhood.Serene, bucolic. The Vacation Worth Having.

About Me

A Midwesterner by birth, I migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that I related better to the Beatniks. I harkened back to an "old school" world of hard bop, Coltrane, jazz, poetry, painting and photography. A large part of my life went "off the rails" and I experienced the reality of the streets for too long. Putting myself back together was the defining experience of my life so far. It wasn't easy. It did, however, nurture the writer in me. I have written novels, memoirs, poems, humorous fake emails, and commercials

for ridiculous non existent products. I have a passion for astronomy, history, psychology, the pure abstract absurdity of human experience (what the hell is it?). My partner is an honest to god Animal Communicator, as nutty as that may sound to some people. She is the real deal. She also suffers from Fibro and it's a curse with which we must work every day. Come visit my blog and